Richmond girl recants kidnapping, gang rape

RICHMOND

A 15-year-old girl recanted her report that she was kidnapped at gunpoint off a busy Richmond street and gang-raped, admitting Sunday that she made up the story because she was late getting home, police said.

The girl's chilling account of an attack Friday night by four strangers - one with a distinctive "Money" tattoo on his neck - had prompted a full-scale investigation. Detectives worked overtime and alerted other agencies to be on the lookout for a black Buick the girl described.

The report had also stirred up a new wave of soul-searching in Richmond, where the brutal October gang rape of a 16-year-old girl outside her high school homecoming dance made national headlines.

But on Sunday at 1 p.m., the girl who reported being raped on Friday contacted Richmond detectives, said Lt. Mark Gagan, a department spokesman. During a telephone call that included her family, he said, the girl confessed she had fabricated her story.

"The victim made statements changing her story from a forcible kidnap and rape at gunpoint to saying she was with people she knew and had made up the story because she was late getting home," Gagan said.

More work will be done to confirm that the girl's second account is true, rather than the first, Gagan said. In addition, he said officers are still investigating whether the girl was sexually assaulted on Friday night, noting that she is below the age of legal consent.

"Although her statement changes the direction of the investigation," Gagan said, "we want to prove one of her statements over the other before we're confident of what happened."

The department has no plans to arrest the girl, Gagan said.

Prior to Sunday's call, police had tried to corroborate the girl's story. Gagan said detectives had watched two hours of footage from city-owned cameras perched at the intersection where the girl said she was kidnapped, but did not observe her or an abduction.

The girl had said she was attacked at 5 p.m. while walking home, with four men in a black Buick pulling up to her on Cutting Boulevard near Stege Avenue and calling out to her. One of the men, she said, jumped from the car and forced her inside at gunpoint.

The girl said the men drove around for several hours before stopping at an unknown location, where two of them sexually assaulted her. She said she was released near the bus turnaround at Contra Costa Community College, where a San Pablo police officer found her around midnight.